Contributed by Chriss Street.Specialist in corporate reorganizations and turnarounds, former Chairman of two NYSE listed companies. His latest book, The Third Way, describes how to achieve management excellence and financial reward by moving organizations from Conflict and Confrontation to Leadership and Cooperation. He lives in Newport Beach, CA.

Rather than admit incompetence, the Left has trotted out a new narrative by Robert Gordon: Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?. The theory argues the world’s growth has been concentrated in 3 industrial revolutions since 1750. Gordon argues that the most recent industrial revolution based on computers peaked in 2000, and then went into terminal decline after 2007. This conveniently morphs $6.2 trillion in deficit-spending that failed to create growth into a government safety-net to cushion a capitalist economic decline.

Industrial Revolution #1 from 1750 to 1907 was driven by the steam engine and cotton gin. It took 150 years for the full impact of these productivity enhancing innovations to spin-off the railroads and steamships that interconnected the United States and fostered the growth of American manufacturing exports.

Industrial Revolution #3 from 1996 through 2004 was driven by the advent of personal computers, the World Wide Web and mobile phones. After the productivity enhancements from these innovations had been fully realized with the spin-off global social networking, economic growth declined.

American Founding Father, John Adams, 243 years ago said: “Facts are stubborn things.” Robert Gordon in 2000 published: Interpreting The “One Big Wave” In U.S. Long-Term Productivity in the prestigious National Bureau of Economic Research to explain the cause of the long wave of American productivity from 1891 and 1972. He determined protracted productivity was due to “closing of American labor markets to immigration between the 1920s and 1960s, thus boosting wages and stimulating capital-labor substitution.” Gordon also determined lower productivity from 1972 to 1995 was due to the entrance of unskilled adult females, legal and illegal immigrants, and teens holding down American productivity and wages.

The Left is desperate to shift blame onto capitalism after deficit-spending ballooned the debt of the United States from 80% to over 100% of the size of the economy, without generating sustainable economic growth. But it would seem politically incorrect for the Left to follow the implications of Robert Gordon’s research that the best way to increase productivity would be to throw women, illegal immigrants and teens out of the workforce. Contributed by Chriss Street.